Riassunto
Riassunto di La razza ventura
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love early science fiction, Victorian satire and imagined societies, and enjoy exploring ideas about peace, progress and freedom.
Che cos’è questo libro
The Coming Race is a short novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published without his name in 1871 and later known as his work. Bulwer-Lytton was a politician and a popular novelist of the Victorian age. Here he writes a tale of travel to an underground world, in the manner of a traveller's report.
The story is told by an unnamed young American who explores a passage below a mine and finds a hidden civilisation far below the surface. Its people are taller, stronger and longer lived than humans, and they command a mysterious energy called vril. You get an adventure, a satire of Victorian life, and a thought experiment about what a perfect society might cost. Let us begin with how the narrator first goes down.
In questo riassunto
- 1A mine shaft opens onto another worldFree
- 2A lit land below the earth
- 3Vril, the force that runs everything
- 4A peaceful society with no struggle
- 5Strange customs, women and the question of love
- 6Learning the language and the limits of the guest
- 7What the story says about progress
- 8How the tale is told
Punto chiave 1 di 8
A mine shaft opens onto another world
The narrator is a young traveller from the United States. He tells us he is writing for readers after his own time, and he keeps his name and some details hidden. He visits a great mine, guided by a friendly engineer who is an old acquaintance.
The engineer has found a chasm that leads far below the working galleries. Curious, the two men climb down by rope to explore it. The engineer goes first, and the narrator follows in a spirit of adventure.
Something goes wrong in the depths. The engineer does not return as expected, and the narrator is left alone in a strange place that is not like any mine he knows.
This opening matters because it sets the tone. Bulwer-Lytton uses the plain voice of a travel writer to make a wild tale feel like a report. The reader is asked to accept the impossible because the narrator sounds so calm about it.
That’s 1 of 8 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Who’s who
- The narrator
- A curious young American traveller becomes a guest among underground people whose powers far exceed those of his own society.
- The engineer
- A mining engineer and friend of the narrator guides him into the chasm where their strange adventure begins.
- The first underground host
- A tall, calm inhabitant of the underground world receives the narrator and introduces him to its unfamiliar society.
- The young woman of the house
- The daughter of the narrator's host teaches him her people's customs and takes a growing personal interest in him.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 53,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 3 h 35 min
- Listening time5 h 55 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages